Marijuana Blog

A new study out of Great Britain about the effects of cannabis on Multiple Sclerosis tries to portray a major defeat for medical marijuana opponents when all it really does is show the flaws of the study itself.

The large study out of Britain, funded by Britain's Medical Research Council, shows a failure of a single chemical in cannabis – tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – to work better than a placebo for MS patients. However, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of cannabis knows it contains dozens of chemicals, including one that has to be included in any study of medical cannabis, CBD.

The second most common cannabinoid found in cannabis, CBD or cannabidiol, has been shown in many instances to be a powerful anti-inflammatory as well as being an effective medicine for anxiety, convulsions, and nausea and has even been shown to reduce the growth of cancer cells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol). Yet these researchers didn’t bother to include it in the study.

As many know, THC does have some medical benefits, but CBD and other cannabinoids are emerging as medical powerhouses in their own right. THC is the psychoactive chemical in cannabis that produces euphoria, among other feelings.

Whether you believe in creationism or evolution or some other form of intelligent design, cannabis is the way it is for a reason. Each chemical interacts with the others in special ways that have produced amazing results. This is why the synthetic drug Marinol fails for so many people, because it only contains THC.

If you’re not going to study all of the chemicals in cannabis, why bother? Medical marijuana patients get relief from the full range of cannabinoids, not by extracting certain ingredients.

David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, says this study is just the beginning. "It would be wrong to interpret these preliminary findings to mean that cannabis does not achieve its licensed use. Cannabis is not licensed for limiting disease progression, it is licensed for dealing with spasticity and pain," he said.